Lucy Frazer: The Department is very alive to the challenges facing freelancers, and we are looking at this in the creative sector vision. I know that my hon. Friend is passionate about this area, particularly in relation to opera. I assure him that it is something on which we continue to engage with other Departments.

Lucy Frazer: I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising those important questions, some of which we engage on regularly with the Treasury, particularly energy. As I said in my previous answer, we have schemes to support grassroots venues. The ACE scheme has been extended to March and we will continue to look at what more we can do to support this important sector.

Penny Mordaunt: The business for the week commencing 13 March will include:
Monday 13 March—Second Reading of the Illegal Migration Bill.
Tuesday 14 March—Debate on a motion on homelessness among Ukrainian refugees in the UK, followed by a debate on a motion on seizure of Russian assets. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.
Wednesday 15 March—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver his Budget statement.
Thursday 16 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Friday 17 March—Private Members’ Bills.
The provisional business for the week commencing 20 March will include:
Monday 20 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Tuesday 21 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.

Pauline Latham: On 1 December, when I raised the issue of recognition of the Ukrainian holodomor as a genocide, the Leader of the House advised me to apply for a debate in the usual way, which I did. This Tuesday I led a Westminster Hall debate on the issue during which I and others called for the Government to recognise this awful genocide, and asked whether, if they could not recognise it, Parliament could be given the opportunity to do so. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, the hon. Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty, informed me that whether Parliament could vote on the issue was
“a matter for the Leader of the House.” —[Official Report, 7 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 89WH.]
Will the Leader of the House therefore arrange a debate and a meaningful vote in Government time, so that the House can recognise the holodomor as a genocide and show its strong support for Ukraine?

Penny Mordaunt: I am very sorry to hear of the situation in my hon. Friend’s constituency. That is clearly not acceptable. We often say that we want more people to use public transport and leave their cars behind, but for many people the car is their only option. We must ensure those services work, and she is right in her assessment. The next Transport questions is not until 20 April, so I will write this afternoon on her behalf and bring that to the Transport Secretary’s attention.

Penny Mordaunt: I thank the hon. Lady for her question, which she can clearly raise at the next Environment, Food and Rural Affairs questions on 30 March. I gently point out, however, that I do not think any Government have done as much to make their objectives legally binding, whether on biodiversity, water quality or net zero.

Penny Mordaunt: I am very sorry to hear about this situation, and I know that my hon. Friend has been working tirelessly to get people to step up and take their responsibilities. He will know that the next questions on this matter are on 27 March, but I shall write on his behalf to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to ask for its advice about what possible remedies it could suggest to my hon. Friend to get people to step up and take responsibility.

Andrew Gwynne: On Saturday I was the guest of a number of WASPI women to watch their play, “Stung”, which was absolutely brilliant. Yesterday I met other 1950s-born women in the pouring rain on Parliament square. The all-party parliamentary group on state pension inequality for women also took evidence from BackTo60 and CEDAWinLAW. These women are not going away.
The Leader of the House knows that the ombudsman has already found maladministration relating to the 1950s women, but why is the Department for Work and Pensions still sending out letters with incorrect information? I have one here from 12 January 2023, saying that the state pension age is 60 for a woman and 65 for a man. May we have a debate in Government time on the incompetence of the Department for Work and Pensions and on how we can get the WASPI women the justice they deserve?

Marion Fellows: On 22 March 2018, I said:
“For the past two years, I have been helping a constituent with her ongoing attempts to have her former local government employer rightfully added to the redundancy modification order.”—[Official Report, 22 March 2018; Vol. 638, c. 401.]
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities recently sent an email saying
“the Redundancy Modification Order was paused due to resource pressures”
and that the Department is
“currently unable to provide a view as to the timescale for completion of a revised consolidation order.”
Does the Leader of the House agree it is ridiculous that people have been waiting more than 10 years for this to  happen? This is a non-contentious issue, so will she please use her good offices to get the Department to pull out its finger and get this done?

Penny Mordaunt: That is not a satisfactory situation, and I will be happy to raise it with the Department after this session. The next Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Question Time is on 27 March, and the hon. Lady may be interested to know that my noble Friend Lord True, the Leader of the House of Lords, and I met all the permanent secretaries yesterday to make very clear the level of service we expect from their Departments.

Penny Mordaunt: My hon. Friend is right that this is an incredibly important sector and a real sovereign capability for this country. He will have many opportunities to raise it on the Floor of the House, because it is relevant to so many Departments, but I suggest that Business and Trade Question Time on 23 March might be the nearest opportunity.

Vicky Ford: This is exactly the point. Educating girls creates benefits for the girls themselves and for the whole society—not just greater economic growth, through  women being able to go out and work and create their own incomes, but societal benefits such as the health benefits I have just mentioned.
F is for freedom. Last month I met a survivor of domestic abuse who had just escaped from her violent partner with her three children. As a Member of Parliament, I said to her, “Is there anything more that we could do for you?” She looked me in the eye and said, “No, Vicky —I’ve got everything. I’m free!”, with her arms in the air. May we have more of those free women.
G is for girls. They are our future, but we should not think that the experiences they face today are the same as the experiences we had growing up. Adolescent girls are disproportionately negatively affected by online harassment. We need to listen to them, understand their experiences and let them inform us, especially as we seek to make laws and policies that affect them.
H is for the hijab and headscarves, and for the brave women of Iran who are prepared to risk their own lives because they believe in the right to choose whether they should have to wear one.
I is for impunity. Women as young as four and as old as their 80s have been raped by Russian soldiers in Ukraine—barbaric sexual violence committed by order of military commanders. We must hold the perpetrators to account, take them to court and break the cycle of impunity on conflict-related sexual violence.
J is for Julia Jeapes, my association chairman. None of us would be here without the volunteers in our parties.
K is for Kaja Kallas, the Prime Minister of Estonia. We need more strong women leaders in this world. K is also for Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia, where the rains have just failed for the fifth season and more than 20 million people, mostly women and children, are living in extreme food insecurity.
L is for levelling up, which is not just a north-south issue. In Mid Essex from 1 April women will have access to IVF on the NHS for the first time. I thank Health Ministers for ending the postcode lottery of health funding.
M is for marriage; child marriage sometimes sounds as if it could be a romantic and beautiful thing, but it is so far from that. A child entering into marriage often faces rape and a life of slavery. I say thank you and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham), and the noble Baroness Sugg in the other place on the work that they have done pulling through the Marriage and Civil Partnership (Minimum Age) Act 2022, to make sure that no person under the age of 18 can get married in this country.
N is for numeracy. I am a mathematician; there are not many mathematicians in this place and certainly not many women mathematicians. We must end the stigma that suggests that girls do not do maths. I am celebrating the fact that year after year we see more and more girls doing maths A-levels; we should encourage them to continue to do more.
O is for online safety. There are some excellent measures in the Online Safety Bill to protect women; the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls gave the UK a shout-out for our legislation in a meeting yesterday, particularly the measures to prevent deepfake porn videos.
P is for pornography. We need to do much more to tackle the online pornography that our children are coming across and watching; often they just stumble across violent pornography, as a result of which, girls are increasingly being subjected to violent sex. I hope the Government will look favourably on the amendments that the noble Lord Bethell will be tabling to the Online Safety Bill in the other place.
Q is for queens. I miss our late Queen deeply. As the Foreign Office Minister at the time, I had the honour of meeting foreign leaders as they came to sign the condolence books, and the deep grief amongst women leaders was huge. The late Queen wrapped her own arm around women leaders across the world, and I wish our new Queen all the best as she prepares for her coronation.
R is for rape. The rate of prosecution for rape is on its way up, but it is still too low and the Government must keep focusing on it. S is for the abhorrent Stephen Bear, a violent, abusive, misogynistic man who has just been sent to jail for revenge pornography—and long may he stay there. So much praise must go to the brave Georgina Harrison, who was determined to see him stand trial for what he has done.
T is for thank you. The late Madeleine Albright said there was a “special place in hell” for a woman who does not support other women, but I think there is a special place in heaven for men who put their own heads above the parapet to defend women’s rights. I thank the Father of the House in particular for being here today.
U is for Ukraine and the women of Ukraine. Despite the rapes, despite the 6,000 children who have been abducted, despite the deaths of children, partners, sons and grandparents, the women of Ukraine continue to stand firm and brave and fight for their freedom. Their fight for freedom is the world’s fight for freedom and we will stand with them, not only on International Women’s Day, but every day for as long as this takes.
V is for violence in politics. Online violence makes women MPs silence our voices and puts women off standing. Too many women in the UK face real threats to their safety. We must stop the hate speech and make it clear that violence will not be tolerated in our politics.
W is for wonderful. We often complain about all the challenges women have, but we often forget to say that being a woman is wonderful and I would not have it any other way. X and Y are chromosomes and Zs are for sleep, so I thank hon. Members for listening and not falling asleep.

Hannah Bardell: It is a huge pleasure and privilege to speak in this debate. There have been some fantastic and powerful speeches by right hon. and hon. Members. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller), who opened the debate. I have fond memories of us trekking down the corridor to the former Speaker’s office to advocate for baby and parental leave for Members of this House, to try to take this place forward. It is right, as other Members have said, that female parliamentarians often work cross-party to achieve progress. It is not the Punch and Judy show that folks see on the television week in, week out.
I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) for her incredibly moving speech. It has become a grim tradition, it is fair to say, that every year she discharges her duty of reading the names of women who have been killed by violent men. That is incredibly important.
One of those names was a constituent of mine, Aimee Cannon. Her mother, Wendy Cannon, is here with us today in the Gallery. I want to share the details of what happened to Aimee. I stress that these are Wendy’s own words, and we are privileged that she is willing to share them with us through me, her Member of Parliament.
On 5 May last year, Wendy and her husband were enjoying a Friday night. It felt like any other typical Friday night as they began thinking about the weekend. Wendy had been communicating with their daughter, Aimee, via WhatsApp. Aimee had been telling them how much she was looking forward to work the next day. Aimee worked at a beauty salon. She had plans to celebrate at a birthday party that weekend, and she was also going to help out at a charity fundraising event for a children’s hospice. In spite of her own challenges—anorexia, self-harming, domestic abuse and addiction—she wanted to help others. She had a big heart. That was Aimee.
On Saturday her parents became worried about Aimee’s lack of contact. Aimee’s father went to her house and found her dead with multiple injuries. The police described the attack as a brutal and sustained attack. Aimee would have been frightened, in pain, alone and dying in a place that she should have felt safe in. Aimee was only 26 years old, and she had so much to live for and so much to give.
Aimee’s parents and their grandchildren’s lives will never be the same again. Aimee’s mum Wendy told me that they stagger from day to day in a dark maze of grief, lost in a legal system that they do not understand.  They have one question: how many more women have to die before we recognise that gender violence is now becoming an epidemic in our society?
I am incredibly proud of and grateful to Aimee’s parents for their courage and bravery in sharing Aimee’s story, and for allowing me to share it today. When Wendy first came to see us to get support, we sat together and she told me about Aimee. And we cried—a lot. Wendy said to me this morning when she came to Parliament that she had heard the Prime Minister’s legitimate concerns about his daughter’s safety while walking to school. She said that she hears that—but imagine how she feels.
The challenges that Aimee faced in her life are, sadly, shared by many women across the UK. I have spoken before of women from my constituency, Kirsty Maxwell and Julie Pearson, who were both killed abroad at the hands of violent men. It was their untimely and tragic deaths that led my team and me to start our work on deaths abroad and consular assistance. There are so many other women we could talk about, though some are very often missed off our lists, forgotten about or unnamed.
We are privileged to be here and in this position as female parliamentarians. I am in this place because of generations of women who have come before me, who fought for our right to vote, to get paid equally and to get treated fairly, and who fought for real progress at their own expense, both professionally and personally. In fact, yesterday I had the privilege of taking some of the WASPI women—from the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—to the suffragette broom cupboard, a little-known shrine for those feminists among us. On the night of the 1911 census, Emily Wilding Davison hid herself in that cupboard so that she could record it as her address, in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. Her census form gives the postal address as:
“Found hiding in crypt of Westminster Hall”,
and the pencilled note on the bottom left gives the date, “3/4/11 Since Saturday”. Emily was arrested on nine occasions, went on hunger strike seven times and was force-fed on 49 occasions. She died after being hit by King George V’s horse at the 1913 Derby when she walked on to the track during the race, sacrificing herself so that we can be here today.
There was something almost prophetic about showing those incredible women, who have faced such injustice, that place where another great woman suffered and sacrificed to make her point.

Maria Caulfield: May I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions this afternoon? I particularly thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) for securing this debate and for her work every day of the year on championing women’s rights. I thank all hon. Members who have spoken so passionately today about the issues on which they are campaigning on behalf of women up and down the country.
As my right hon. Friend pointed out, many women who have gone before us have led the way to our being here today. The hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare) mentioned Baroness Boothroyd, but there have also been women such as Margaret Thatcher, the first female Prime Minister, who broke that glass ceiling. Unlike the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), I am not afraid to compliment and pay tribute to female Members on the other side of the House. A personal heroine for me was Mo Mowlam. The hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) spoke about how women have been erased from photos and others have often taken the credit for their hard work; Mo Mowlam was instrumental in delivering peace for Northern Ireland, but she is very often forgotten when we talk about issues around the Northern Ireland protocol. However, she is very much remembered for the work that she did.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) said that there is a special place in heaven for men who stand up for women. Today I want to remember Sir David Amess, who usually spoke in these debates; I think particularly of his work on endometriosis. I am sure that he would be very pleased to see his successor, my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Anna Firth), taking part in this debate. It has also been great to see my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing  West (Sir Peter Bottomley) spending most of the afternoon in this Chamber to listen to women speak about the issues that we face. We are very lucky to have such a Father of the House who respects female Members.
On International Women’s Day yesterday, I was particularly pleased that so many Departments were able to showcase the work that has been done and make announcements on tackling the issues that women face, many of which have been raised today. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office launched its first international women and girls strategy yesterday, which highlights the work being done globally to tackle threats to gender equality across the world. From climate change and crisis to conflicts and coronavirus, those threats disproportionately affect many women in certain countries; hon. Members have spoken particularly about Iran and Afghanistan today. Significant work is going on to support women across the world.
I want to touch in particular on the issues facing the women of Ukraine. I had the great pleasure and honour of meeting the First Lady, Mrs Zelenska, this year. While of course planes, weapons and resources are important, her plea to us in this place was to make people aware of how rape is being used as a weapon of war against women in Ukraine—there are young girls, women, older women and elderly women who are being raped as part of the war against Ukraine.
I am pleased that the UK has cemented its position as a leading global actor standing up for women who are under attack. We know the scale and severity of gender-based violence at times of conflict and insecurity. I am proud that the UK is recognised internationally for the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, committing £60 million to preventing and responding to conflict-related sexual violence since 2012. Last November the UK hosted the PSVI international conference in London, with more than 1,000 delegates, and secured new political declarations with 53 countries and 40 national communities. That is incredible work.
However, this debate has mainly focused on the domestic issue of the gender-based violence that women and girls are experiencing up and down the country. We heard a very moving speech from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who highlighted the sheer scale of the women who have been murdered in the past year. The right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) described the terrible, tragic case of Libby Squire, and the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) told us Wendy’s story about her daughter Aimee. Members cannot have failed to be moved by that.
Of course we are doing great work in improving the experience of women. We have announced the awarding of grants to rape crisis centres in England and Wales to set up a national telephone support line, open 24/7, which was launched on 7 December, and we are providing £27 million to recruit more independent sexual and domestic violence advisers. Despite all that, however, there is clearly a significant problem. Violence against women and girls was included in the women’s health strategy because it is not just a criminal issue or a justice issue. I was pleased to see both my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), the Minister for Victims and Sentencing, and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines), in the Chamber earlier to hear about this staggering problem.

Maria Caulfield: I shall be happy to do that, and we can certainly arrange to meet following this debate.
The shadow Minister was slightly dismissive of the groundbreaking Online Safety Bill. However, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford has reported that the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls has described it as world- leading. Many other countries are following our progress, and, indeed, may adopt similar legislation. The Bill will tackle criminal activity online. It will protect children from harmful and inappropriate content, and it aims to stop the rise of online misogyny. Several Members have mentioned the importance of that.
Let me say something about business. The UK is now successfully including gender provision in all the free trade agreements that we have made since leaving the EU. Our trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand, for instance, contain dedicated trade and gender equality chapters. That too is groundbreaking work. As for our domestic business focus, our taskforce on women-led high- growth enterprise was established last summer. I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) for her work in the all-party parliamentary group on women and work, not just her work in pushing science, technology, engineering and maths for women, but the high-growth sector work she is doing. If we deliver more women with ambition, we will improve growth in our economy and also improve the outcome for those women as they thrive in the workplace.
We know that childcare is an issue. That is why we have spent more than £3.5 billion over the last three years on early education entitlement, and have increased the funding for local authorities to £160 million this year, £180 million next year and £170 million thereafter, to allow them to increase their payments to local childcare providers. I recognise the challenges and the cost that childcare imposes on families, but I also know how difficult it is for the providers to sustain their business model.
Turning briefly to women’s health, I am proud that in the past year we have published the first women’s health strategy for England. The hon. Member for Vauxhall  (Florence Eshalomi) mentioned that in particular, and I am very keen that we make progress in that space, especially on maternity disparities. We have appointed Dame Lesley Regan as the first women’s health ambassador to lead that work. We announced yesterday that we are investing £25 million to roll out women’s health hubs across the country, providing a one-stop shop for women’s healthcare needs.
We will also level up IVF access to same-sex couples and across the board, ensuring consistent provision across the country, which does not currently exist. The HRT prepayment certificate will be launched from 1 April, cutting the cost of HRT by hundreds of pounds. We also aim to announce our pregnancy loss certificate later this summer, so that babies born before 24 weeks can be registered—an important issue for those parents who have lost babies. The major conditions strategy will look at long-term conditions such as heart disease, musculoskeletal conditions and dementia, the leading cause of death in women, which for too long have been ignored.
Finally, I want to touch on girls’ education, which it is a top priority for us in both our international commitment—we want 12 years of quality education for every girl, which is the best way to get girls and women out of poverty—and our domestic commitments. The Prime Minister in his first speech set out his ambition to ensure that all school pupils in England study some form of maths to the age of 18. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) raised the issue of teaching materials in schools; the Prime Minister yesterday committed to a review of those and we will look forward to what that shows.
We need to get more women and girls into science, because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke said, despite getting more girls into STEM   A-levels and on to undergraduate courses, we only see women making up 29.4% of the STEM workforce. That is why we are running our STEM Returners pilot; there are 75,000 people, mainly women, with experience and qualifications in STEM who are not working in the sector and who we want to see return to practice.
I hope that that showcases some of the work we are doing across the board. There are many challenges—we do not deny or shirk that fact—but we are making significant progress. In particular, domestically, on violence against women and girls, I hope that this time next year we will have a better story to tell.

[Relevant documents: First Report of the Petitions Committee, Session 2015-16, Funding for research into brain tumours, HC 554, and the Government response, Session 2016-17, HC 292; Oral evidence taken before the Petitions Committee on 15 January 2019, on Funding for research into brain tumours, HC 1792, Session 2017-19; Oral evidence taken before the Petitions Committee on 27 May 2021, on Brain tumour and childhood cancer research, HC 242, Session 2021-22; Correspondence between the Petitions Committee and the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health and Social Care, on brain tumour and childhood cancer research, dated 15 June and 7 July 2021; Correspondence between the Petitions Committee and the Chief Executive of UK Research and Innovation, on brain tumour and childhood cancer research, dated 15 June and 13 July 2021; e-petition 105560, Fund more research into brain tumours, the biggest cancer killer of under-40s; e-petition 300027, Fund research for childhood cancers with the worst survival rates]

Derek Thomas: I will come on to that point later. I am grateful for the contributions that we have already heard.
I pay tribute to the late Dame Tessa Jowell, who sadly received her own diagnosis of a brain tumour soon after that debate, when Government funding was being announced. At that time, about five years ago, she said in the other place:
“For what would every cancer patient want? First, to know that the best, the latest science was being used…wherever in the world it was developed, whoever began it.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 January 2018; Vol. 788, c. 1170.]
Sadly, she passed away in May 2018.
Soon after, an additional £20 million of Government money was made available and the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission was established. I pay tribute to Dame Tessa Jowell’s daughter and the mission for the way that they have transformed the pathway and the care that brain tumour patients get, and for the work that they continue to do. I appreciate the way that they have engaged with me and others on the all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours in their work.
The provision of £65 million heralded a significant shift in focus towards brain tumours. Given the high-profile commitment to brain cancer research, we should not be here calling for a commitment and a focus on brain tumour research five years later. Sadly, however, despite the £40 million of Government funds that were committed to research, there has been a lack of grant deployment to researchers.
It is important to note that Cancer Research UK, since announcing its commitment to spend £25 million on strategic initiatives in brain tumour research in 2018, has committed almost £28 million to that cause. That is not the case for Government funding. To date, the figures of the National Institute for Health and Care Research—the body responsible for distributing that research funding—state that of the £40 million, between £10 million and £15 million has been deployed, and that depends on how we interpret brain tumour research.
The all-party parliamentary group on brain tumours, which I am privileged to chair—perhaps I should have declared my interest at the start—decided to conduct the “Pathway to a Cure—breaking down the barriers” inquiry, which aimed to identify barriers preventing that important funding flowing to its intended recipients. We felt the need to launch that inquiry only because a series of meetings, including with the National Institute for Health and Care Research, the Medical Research Council, the Department of Health and Social Care and a Government Minister, failed to reassure us that dedicated research funding would or could be used to ramp up the research needed if we want to discover the breakthrough that every brain tumour sufferer and their family longs for.
Those of us who serve on the all-party group were able to understand the severity of the issue and the lived experience for patients, families, clinicians and researchers  only because of the sterling work of the charity Brain Tumour Research. It provides the secretariat for the all-party group and brings together thousands of people across the UK to share their experience, knowledge and understanding, and to make up what I affectionately know as the brain tumour family.
In February last year, we launched our inquiry and took evidence from clinicians, researchers and patients. We released our report last Tuesday. Today, part of the way into Brain Tumour Awareness Month, we will set out what we have unearthed during the inquiry and press the Government to review and reform their method of deploying research funds to those who can make best use of them.
From our work, we know that researchers find it challenging to access Government funding, because the system is built in silos. We know that cell line isolation and biobanking are happening, but at only a minority of sites across the research community; that the pool of talented researchers is finite; and that NIHR processes act as a disincentive to researchers who can apply their expertise and intellect more easily elsewhere in the medical research field.
We also found that there are a limited number of clinical trials available for brain tumour patients, and that the national trials database is not reliable. We found that pharmaceutical companies are choosing not to pursue the development of brain cancer drugs in the UK, and that funding is not ringfenced—specifically for research into childhood brain tumours, as has been mentioned, where survival rates for the most aggressive tumours have remained unchanged for decades.

Siobhain McDonagh: I crave the indulgence of the House for the speech that I am about to make.
On 27 November 2021, my beautiful, unique, tough, resilient, successful sister collapsed in front of me and had a series of fits. Five hours later, in University College Hospital, two doctors named Henry told me that they suspected that she had a brain tumour, but as this was the NHS, MRI scans were not done at the weekend, so they could not confirm their diagnosis. On Wednesday, when I stepped on to her ward, she demanded—and everybody here who knows her will be able to hear her say it—that I ask the ward doctor to come and speak to her. She said, “It’s bad, Siobhain, because he can’t look at me.” And it was.
For the woman who had run Labour’s only two consecutive successful general election campaigns, and achieved her ultimate ambition to see two full-term Labour Governments, the diagnosis was of a glioblastoma. All her toughness evaporated, and there was my little sister with a diagnosis that meant that she might have nine months left—a condition for which there was no cure, for which treatment had not made progress in over 30 years. Just before Christmas, she had the tumours removed by two amazing female surgeons, Róisín Finn and Anna Miserocchi at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, but this was post Brexit, so there were not enough nurses to keep all the operating theatres open, and Margaret’s operation was cancelled three times. I leave it to Members to guess my reaction to that, and how we got that operation in the end.
The best piece of advice I have ever received in my life, and I have received many bits of good advice, was from the clinical nurse specialist. When we asked her where Margaret should go for post-operative treatment— St George’s, down the road from where we live; the Royal Marsden, around the corner; or to stay at University College—Róisín said, “We have Professor Paul Mulholland, and he is the best. He is the best in the UK, and he is the best in Europe.” I want to confirm to the House that he is the best. He is why Margaret is still alive.
What you get when you have your tumour removed, if you live that long—many people do not—is six weeks’ radiotherapy, followed by six months’ chemotherapy with a drug called temozolomide. That drug was introduced in 2005, and since then there have been no variations to the gold-standard treatment in our NHS, so when you read articles such as the one in The Times on Monday, telling us all how successful cancer treatment in the UK is—how 85% of people with a breast cancer diagnosis, 55% of people with a bowel cancer diagnosis, and 98% of people with a prostate cancer diagnosis will get to live for 10 years—do not believe that it is the same for brain cancer. The Times may have chosen a brain as the photograph for the top of the article, but those statistics do not apply.
Margaret had her treatment in early new year 2022; like so many, she could not go through with it—the treatment would have killed her. At that point, where do you go? There were no alternatives. It is not that there are a few trials: there are no trials, and there is nowhere to go. So, like so many of us who are lucky enough to have friends and family and access to money, we looked to the private sector and international travel. Margaret has been on a course of treatment with nivolumab, a Bristol Myers Squibb drug that was seen to be unsuccessful in the treatment of brain cancer, and Avastin, and has been going monthly to Düsseldorf, Germany for four days. That might seem an easy thing to do, but taking a  seriously ill person on an aeroplane to a hotel, with no access to healthcare and no emergency services, would be foolhardy unless there was nothing else in this country. There was, and is, nothing.
The help that we received from Dr Sahinbas and his wife, who runs their small clinic in Germany, with hyperthermic treatment was amazing. Their kindness was overwhelming, but there were times when I thought that I would not be able to get Margaret on the plane—that somebody would stop her because she was so unwell. There was one night when I stayed and stared at her, because I did not think she was going to make it through the night, and how would I explain that to anybody?
By June 2022, Margaret had a scan, and they could not see the tumour. When I asked Dr Mulholland, “Is this normal for this treatment?”, he said, “Normal? I have never tried this on anybody before.” Nobody has ever had this drug so early in their treatment or at the quantity that Margaret has had it, or at the same time as hyperthermia therapy. Those who know about Margaret’s experience have come to me and sought support from Dr Mulholland because there is nothing else. The number that the NHS is currently forsaking and, for the lucky people who can get the funds to do it, abandoning to international travel is nothing short of a complete and utter national scandal. I wonder what my mum who came here in 1947 to train as part of the first generation of NHS nurses from Ireland would say about the NHS abandoning her daughter.
But things can be different. Things can be better—maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, and maybe not within Margaret’s lifetime—and they can be different if we want them to be different. I ask the Minister to please not give the NHS or the cancer research charities any more money until they guarantee that at least 200 sufferers every year get access to a trial—that would be 1,000 patients over the lifetime of a Parliament—because with those trials we can begin to understand what works and what does not.
The Minister should give no more money to the NHS trainers until they commit that every young doctor training to be a medical oncologist has to go through a course on brain tumour. At the moment, there is no compulsory training. The reason why there is nobody on those wards and nobody doing the work is that we are training nobody, and we are training nobody because nobody is required to do the course, and it was like that 15 years ago with melanoma. Some 15 years ago, the survival rates were so poor, but somebody came up with the idea that immunotherapy would be successful, and today we see successful survival rates equivalent to the best in any discipline. We also see young doctors wanting to take on the specialism, because it is exciting, there is hope, there is a future and there are alternatives.
Who in their right mind today would become a medical oncologist in glioblastoma? There is no hope, no future, no trials—nothing. It would have to be someone with the belligerence and tenacity of my sister Margaret, and we have found that person in Paul Mulholland, but there needs to be more Pauls and more determination. We must have access to trials for 200 people and the training of medical oncologists, and we must require the pharmaceutical industry—because we  will make no progress without it—to trial every drug that gets licensed to deal with tumours on those with brain tumours, so that there is access to existing drugs that can be repurposed.
I am sorry about the time I have taken for this speech, but I want to tell the House that when I go to bed tonight I will keep my ear open for Margaret to hear her call my name, I will get up and I will go into her room, and it may be that she is asleep and I have imagined that she has called me. I accept that. That is my duty. It is what I have learned from my family, from my faith and from my politics. I accept that. That is my duty. It is what I have learned from my family, what I have learned from my faith, and what I have learned from my politics. I accept my responsibility. All that I want is for the NHS, cancer research charities, and pharmaceutical companies to stand up and accept their responsibility, and give some hope to the 3,200 people who will be diagnosed with a glioblastoma this year.

Greg Smith: It is a privilege to follow the powerful speech from the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), and like you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I congratulate her on the bravery of sharing that deeply personal family story. No matter how difficult and emotional it was for her to share that story with us, Parliament is richer and this debate is all the more powerful for the story that she has told. I thank her for sticking with it, and for sharing that in the House this afternoon. I also send my best wishes to her sister.
This is an incredibly important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to debate the issues around brain tumours, finding a cure, and saving and prolonging lives. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) for the dedication he has shown in opening this debate, for his leadership of the all-party group on brain tumours, for working so hard to raise awareness of brain tumours, and for highlighting the importance of research in improving clinical outcomes for brain tumour patients. It was a privilege to serve under him on the all-party group inquiry that led to the recommendations he spoke of earlier, and the report, “Brain Tumours, Pathway to a Cure—breaking down the barriers”. If I wish to convey a simple message in my remarks this afternoon, it is a sincere plea to my hon. Friend the Minister to take this serious, evidence based report seriously, and to act on its recommendations for the good of all brain tumour patients today and in the future. It is to save lives.
As others have said, despite £40 million being made available by the Department and delivered through National Institute for Health and Care Research in 2018, less than half of that funding made it to researchers. In fact, as of May 2021, only £8.8 million had so far been allocated by NIHR for dedicated brain tumour research. It was said by the Department that more had not been allocated due to
“a lack of new basic science discoveries”
but I suggest that that is completely missing the point, and represents a huge omission in the types of patients being offered trial treatments.
Clinical research is pivotal to improving health outcomes for patients with brain tumours, by developing new methods of prevention, diagnosis and treatment. The benefits of clinical research extend far and wide, with evidence showing that hospitals involved in research provide higher quality care, and have lower levels of patient mortality. The APPG’s inquiry uncovered that there is a gap in research funding along the pathway of discovery, and translational and clinical research. That manifests itself first in an uneven distribution of clinical trials across the country, secondly in the inability of clinicians to secure Government funding for translational research, which takes discoveries from research to the bedside of patients, and thirdly in a lack of staff time for research, and a lack of NHS resource to support those patients on funded research studies.
The all-party parliamentary group report lays out in stark terms the extent to which years of underfunding and neglect for priority areas of research into treatments made the task of reaching parity between patient groups that much harder. In particular, the report highlights how the lack of funding for research into childhood brain tumours, where survival rates for the most aggressive tumours have remained unchanged for decades, have led to frustrated families—upset families, worried families —seeking costly and unproven treatment abroad, which in turn prolongs suffering both for patients and their loved ones. Indeed, five years after the allocation of funding, there are no new treatments and the five-year survival for patients is, I believe, still just 12%. By 25 January, just £15 million had been awarded since June 2018, with £6 million of that not easily identifiable as actually relevant to brain tumours. That, I respectfully put to my hon. Friend the Minister, is not good enough.
The report’s analysis of funding to date highlights that the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health and Care Research contribution was £1 million each, with Cancer Research UK contributing £13 million. Researchers have become increasingly reliant on charities such as Cancer Research UK and Brain Tumour Research. These organisations—do not get me wrong, Mr Deputy Speaker—do fantastic work day in, day out, demonstrating the urgent need for more funding, yet their calls are not being met.
At this point, I would like to pay tribute to one of the most inspirational campaigners and fighters on this cause, my constituent Sue Farrington Smith, who is the chief executive of Brain Tumour Research. She raised £108,000 in the first year of the charity following the tragic loss of her niece Ali, who passed away less than three weeks before her eighth birthday. Sue was subsequently invited to talk about Ali’s Dream at the second UK Brain Tumour Society conference in 2002. She then helped to facilitate the meeting of brain tumour charities, researchers and clinicians at a UK Brain Tumour Society workshop in March 2003 to develop a vision for the brain tumour community. Twelve years since its inception, Brain Tumour Research has provided funding in excess of £15 million to early-stage science and continues to support sustainable research across the UK, raising awareness of brain tumours and campaigning for better outcomes. Sue and everyone at Brain Tumour Research are true heroes, making a daily difference. They deserve to be recognised and credited for all they do. Indeed,  Brain Tumour Research continues working with and—as others have mentioned—providing the secretariat to the APPG. I am very grateful for the support provided with the most recent report, as outlined by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn).
To conclude, I wholeheartedly support the report’s recommendations, as detailed and outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives, including the establishment of an NIHR trials database that is readily accessible to all clinicians across the UK, with clearly defined and regularly updated eligibility criteria and location information, and an awareness campaign that is delivered through the NHS to ensure that the trial database is available to both clinicians and patients.
I want to end by looking back at the inquiry evidence sessions and reflecting on what consultant neurosurgeon Babar Vaqas told us:
“As a clinician I want to be able to sit down with my patient and input all the relevant data about their brain tumour type and their treatment pathway and then, to search an up-to-date progressive UK trial registry. This would enable me to discuss appropriate trial options there and then, giving the patient choices that a modern health provider should be able to offer.”
Let us heed those words, embrace the report and make a difference.

Will Quince: First, let me congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this debate on a very important topic and for his personal commitment to making progress on this devastating condition. Like him, I pay tribute to the life and work of Tessa Jowell, who, after a long and distinguished career on these Benches, left a legacy that lives on in the numerous initiatives that the Government are supporting.
I also thank hon. Members from across the House for their valuable interventions and comments today— I will come to them in turn—especially in regard to NIHR support for cancer research, the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission and our commitment across Government to cancer research funding.
Before I turn to the contributions of individual Members, I want to touch on Government commitments, particularly the Baroness Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives said, in 2018 the Government announced funding through the NIHR of £40 million over five years for brain tumour research as part of the brain cancer mission. I would like to draw on Tessa’s words. She said that this
“is not about politics but about patients and the community of carers who love and support them. It is…about the NHS but it is not just about money. It is about the power of kindness”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 January 2018; Vol. 788, c. 1169.]
We are grateful to all those who have provided care and support and who have campaigned for better funding for research, and to those involved in brain tumour research for keeping this nation at the forefront of scientific progress. Research, as many Members have set out this afternoon, remains key to progress. There are many challenges with brain tumour research, some of which have been set out today, but as Tessa implored us, we must not leave this in the “too difficult” box. I will now try to address the comments made by hon. Members in turn.
My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives rightly praised the work of the Realf family, whose petition led to significant funding and focus on brain tumour research. He rightly pushes us to ensure that we are spending the allocated funding on brain tumour research, and he asks us to look at the NIHR’s processes to make them more user-friendly. He followed the report in calling for a brain cancer champion, as did the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I want us to be world leading in this sphere, so I will take that point away and ask the Secretary of State. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives might pick this up and run with it himself, given how he runs the APPG and given this superb report.
I will come back to research more generally a little later, but my hon. Friend talked about applications and the application process. As part of the £40 million fund, all the applications assessed as fundable in that open competition have been funded—in total, that is 13 of 95 applications, and a further three are under consideration. I very much encourage researchers to make those applications. We have to get it right, and I will come back to this later.
My hon. Friend touched on funding committees, which play a hugely important role. We have a diverse range of applications for funding and, as a result, there is a broad range of expertise sitting on the panels. The panels may or may not include people who specialise in brain tumour research. I understand the frustration of applicants, and work is already being done by the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission, through customised workshops and the work of researchers, to enable people to resubmit their funding applications after understanding why they were not successful.
The right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) rightly praised the work of Brain Tumour Research. I understand his point about not only patients but consultants hearing the phrase, “There is nothing more I can offer or do for you.” We have to do what we can to change that. He rightly says the brain is a very complex organ, which is why treatment and research are so complicated—I will come back to this point if I have time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) talked about the heartbreaking experience of David. She asked us simply to get the money into the hands of researchers, and I wish it were that simple. Understandably, this does not sit in the hands of Ministers—it would be totally inappropriate if it did. It sits in the hands of clinicians and experts in this field, but I completely understand the sense of urgency with which she makes the point. We spend around £1.3 billion  a year on research, and we have to ensure that it is well spent and leads to research that gets treatments and drugs to patients in this country and around the globe.
The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) gave the most powerful testimony, sharing her sister Margaret’s experience. I am so very sorry to hear of her experience, which must have been very difficult to share. She spoke about cancer diagnosis and treatment, and we have come on so much, but I recognise that this is not universal across all cancer types and that we have much more to do.
The hon. Lady made a very strong case for clinical trials, and she spoke about the need to travel abroad. We cannot do every clinical trial in the UK, although I sometimes wish we could. There is global competition, but I give her my personal assurance that clinical trials are high on my agenda. I want to make sure that our United Kingdom has the best environment for clinical trials. We have launched the O’Shaughnessy review, and we are working with the NHS, the MHRA and NICE. We are trying to encourage patients through the NHS app to sign up to clinical trials. Of course, raising awareness of clinical trials is a huge area of interest and importance for me.

Liam Fox: I was coming to the point about the consultation for the scheme. To say that it was suboptimal is to dramatically understate the problem. I believe that it was fundamentally flawed. The consultation opened on 5 February 2021 and ended on 7 March 2021. This was during the third covid lockdown, when most people were more concerned about keeping safe than looking for consultations from North Somerset Council about changes to the seafront. Any consultation could only have been online, or in the very limited press available at that time, as it was illegal to meet face-to-face during this period. It is therefore highly likely that the consultation would not have been visible to older generations and those without internet access. Effectively, North Somerset buried this consultation under the covid pandemic.
North Somerset Council states:
“All these groups were consulted: The Sailing Club, Sea Swimmers, Gig Rowing Club, Canoe club and Pier fishing Club”.
However, as the consultation took place while we were all in lockdown, it is difficult to see how that could have actually happened. The council claims that a grand total   of 750 people wrote in support of the scheme but, within days of it opening, the petition against the scheme had attracted more than 6,000 signatures. It points to a severe deficit in the consultation scheme.
Then we have the damage to local businesses. These businesses in the hospitality sector were badly hit by the covid pandemic and were hoping that this summer would be their chance to regain some of the profitability lost during that period. However, the 64 parking spaces that were on the seafront have been reduced to barely 30. As the landlord of the Moon and Sixpence pub on Clevedon seafront said to me, “Since this scheme came in, our business has fallen off a cliff.” He is not alone. Other businesses have told me of the problems they are having in attracting custom now that people are no longer able to park close to the businesses themselves.
Why are we getting these changes? We seem to have a council that is obsessed with bicycle lanes and meddling with our road system—to whose benefit, it is not clear. Many of the businesses think that the council is blind or simply indifferent to local businesses, preferring to get the plaudits of the cycle lobby, whether in North Somerset or elsewhere. That is affecting business not only on the seafront, but in the Hill Road shopping area.
For us, the scheme is a major loss of amenity. For generations, people have come to Clevedon to look at all those elements I have described. This is a scheme for which there is no need, no demand and no desire from the local population. It creates road safety problems where none existed. It was not properly consulted upon and due diligence may indeed have been absent in the road safety elements that were the duty of the council before bringing the scheme into place. It is a waste of money, with overspending rumoured to be around £250,000. That will have to be taken from local taxpayers, or programmes locally will have to be cut as a consequence.
We need to change the council, and to do that we have to change the councillors, for which we have an opportunity in our local elections in May. Before 2019, and before the council of chaos came into being, we had a competent Conservative local authority, which I hope we will see again, but my right hon. Friend the Minister can help us by saying what the Government might be able to do directly, or through their agencies, to enable us to deal with some of these road safety issues and reassure my constituents that, even when we have a council that will not listen to what they want, we have a Government in Westminster who will.